Todd Pruzan is a New York writer and editor. His book The Clumsiest People in Europe came out in 2005, and the essay in this issue, “Mental Chickens,” will be published in June in the anthology Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives (Harper Perennial).

• February 2009: Mental Chickens
  Proust had his madeleines; Todd Pruzan has a CD of noisy New Zealish pop from the ’90s.